Business in the Front, Party in The BCKYRD

BCKYRD is a content creation company; they make cool pics, videos and illustrations you see on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels. They specialize in the production of 15-30 second “micro videos” that catch the eye and lure in new customers for clients like Hotel Indigo. We caught up with Juwan Platt recently to talk about social media and why BCKYRD chose Savannah.

Creative Coast: Talk to me a bit about what BCKYRD does?

Juwan Platt: BCKYRD is a content creation company. Basically, we make the content that you see on Facebook and Instagram and all of these other social media channels, so photo, video, and design.

CC: With the work BCKYRD is doing, you could go anywhere, right? You could go to Brooklyn or maybe San Francisco or Austin or Chicago or wherever. Why have y’all decided to stay and root down in Savannah?

JP: One is the opportunity that’s here-Savannah is a playground. There is so much opportunity here because it’s relatively small. You don’t have a lot of big players and you don’t have a lot of competition here, so you could pretty much just figure out day-by-day. Plus, we all grew up here, so we know the terrain, we know the playing field. It’s just home court advantage.

CC: We don’t really talk about the failures that got you to the success. Is there any story you want to share on that or just your thoughts on that?

JP: This entire business is just a trial-and-error situation. That’s how we all navigate our lives, basically. “Well, let’s try this today. Oh, that didn’t work out? All right, let’s try this. Oh, that worked out very well,” or “Let’s keep doing that until it stops working.” With that, it’s like there’s no real such thing as failure. It’s really just trying and not trying.

As far as failure, I think it’s a concept that invokes fear in people, and it’s unwarranted. No one really needs that barometer. If you really want to succeed, failure is a myth.

CC: What does success look like for y’all?

JP: We ask ourselves that every day, and it changes every day. Some days, it’s very rational. If we wanted to get X amount of revenue within the next four quarters. Sometimes it’s very emotional. It’s like, man, you just want to create a job that people love to come to and have fun at. Then it gets very spiritual and somewhat thoughtful, and it’s like you’ve been put on this earth to do this. It always changes. But primarily, our focus is to build a great company that serves people, and then show Savannah’s community that it’s still happening here.

CC: On that note, what would you say to folks who have great ideas but they haven’t taken that leap of faith tp start their own business? Or even folks who are outside of Savannah and they’re like, “Maybe I move to this place and I try something.” What would be, not your pitch, but what would you say to encourage them to take that leap of faith?

JP: The biggest thing is be serious. You can’t get anywhere if you’re scared. You have to make sense. You have to really try to put your blinders on and go for it. You want to end up somewhere. That’s the thing. You’re going to end up somewhere. If people feel they’ve failed, they’re going to backwards and it’s like, “Nah.” You very rarely go backwards. Yeah, you maybe have a little less money or a little less time, but you very rarely go backwards. You gain something just by action, so it’s like take the step. Stop being so fearful. That’s the difference between winners and the losers. Both people are scared when they enter the ring, just the coward’s running. The winner’s in the fight.